[sroz39]

So after playing almost non stop since getting back yesterday and picking the game up on my way home from the airport, here's some thoughts on the game, just as they pop in my head. I haven't touched the Career it was pretty much all Play Now rounds and the Prologue:

-the game is absolutely beautiful with some frame rate issues that pop up here and there. But overall, no complaints at all about the graphics. I'm on PS4 FWIW.

-love the presentation and commentary, definitely need to do away with the celebrations.

-like the menus as well, though they could be better organized.

-the courses are replicated almost perfectly. Absolutely love how the grass moves as you take the club back in the thicker stuff.

-lack of courses is obvious but what is there is done so well, makes me pretty excited to see more in the coming months.

Finally, the gameplay, the elephant in the room. I tried variations of all 3 play styles. I tried Tour Mode with everything made as hard as possible. I played 3 click the same way. I even made a Custom set where I used the Standard swing on Expert difficulty to eliminate the really poor representation of tempo in this game.

The long and short of it is, whatever way you go, you're compromising somewhere. With the Tour mode, I've gone into great detail in other threads how poorly I think this is implemented, I'm not going to go over it here. I have had zero issues getting full power shots or anything of that nature. I just think it's really silly to make the stick movement required to get a good swing. It's way WAY too quick. It's not a golf swing or golf tempo in any way, shape or form. And the left/right misses aren't punishing enough. Ideally, I'd love to see the tempo stuff dialed way back, the left/right sensitivity turned way up or make the mis-hit window almost non-existent so that any deviation from a perfect up and down motion results in missing the target left or right to some degree.

3 click, from tee to green on the hardest settings, is almost perfect. It's punishing and makes you think about your misses and where you will err to be safe. Lots of hazards make me try and click a little earlier or a little later at impact so I avoid those hazards. This is beautifully done. Where 3 click falls short is with the short game. I can't put my finger on it but it just feels..."off". Someone a lot smarter than me can probably put this into words but 3 click on and around the greens is lacking.

Then there's the Standard swing style. You obviously don't get very much punishment for tempo or anything like that (unless you hold the top of the swing) but if the left/right on this style was more punishing, it could be a challenging mode. Ultimately, I think this plays more like the old TW games and would probably not be challenging enough in the long run, but it was nice to play a few rounds where I could take a nice smooth backswing and have a more natural progression to the downswing on the sticks. For anyone wanting to try this gameplay style, it is absolutely imperative that you hit Square to take your swing from Default to Full (or whatever shot type you're going to use) and not move the marker up and down for distance, only left and right. At that point, you have to hit a percentage of the full swing and it makes this more challenging.

For the time being, I'm going to go with 3 click when I start my Career and wait it out until a potential update makes Tour Mode harder. Could I make Tour Mode harder now by going to a full swing and calculating my distance from there? Yeah, I could but this swing interface has taken a step back from the 13 & 14 versions and become even more twitchy. Good luck trying to hit an 80% shot or 85% shot consistently. It seems like there's no way to attain any sort of consistency with the backswing in the game's current form which is a shame. If you try and take the club back slowly to be more precise, half the time it restarts your swing because I think it stopped reading your backswing at anything less than hyperspeed on the sticks.

As negative as it seems I'm being, I'm having an absolute blast playing the game. I think its fun. I think it'd be more fun if some changes were made to Tour Mode though.

Contrary to most here, I have no problem with the decision to put your yardage marker out there and try to hit to that percentage. It's what Tour pros do on every single shot they take. It's why they want yardages to the yard, not at 5 yard increments. I'm alright with putting my aim marker at 147yds and trying to make a swing that will make that happen.

But for this system to work, the backswing needs to be slowed down, the transition to the downswing has to stop feeling like a fighting game move and finally (and most importantly) the left/right misses, big and miniscule, have to be punished to some extent. I hope that's what's happening in the future.

The putting is pretty awful in its current state, the system is reminiscent of the TW games of 2005 and prior where you put the marker where you want it and just take a full swing every time. Not good. Scrap this baby, at least on Tour mode, give me one putter, and make me figure it out from there. With one caveat, going back to what I said above: make the backswing less sensitive. Otherwise, good luck trying to get a feel for anything on the greens.

Lastly, speaking of the greens, Tournament conditions aren't quite hard enough. One of my favourite things about playing in majors in TW 13 & 14 is how careful you had to be putting the ball because of the speed of the greens. Right now, the ball rockets off the putter and then seemingly hits the brakes near the hole.

Like I said, having alot of fun. From videos I thought it was an 8/10, playing it now, nothing has changed for me. It's a good golf game. But to truly take it to the next level, especially on the hardest difficulties, it needs some changes and an overhaul on the line of thinking of what makes golf hard. This game is close to being special.

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